Bernardo Malfitano, 30, poses with the wreckage of his RV-6A plane, which he crash landed in a marshy area on South Whidbey Thursday. Malfitano did not suffer serious injury in the crash.

A Lynnwood man crash landed his small two-seater airplane in a marshy grassland on South Whidbey Thursday.

The
aircraft touched down in the fields between the waterfront community on
Sunlight Beach Road and the Sun Vista Circle neighborhood off Bayview
Road. The crash was reported at 4:17 p.m.

Pilot Bernardo
Malfitano, 30, suffered some scrapes and bruises but was otherwise
unharmed. He says the cause of the accident was fuel related.

“I had a bad fuel gauge indication,” he said. “The gauge said I had about a quarter tank. I didn’t.”

Malfitano
took off earlier that day from Paine Field in his RV-6A, a small
kit-built plane produced by Van’s Aircraft. The 185 horsepower
single-engine aircraft has a cruising speed of about 185 mph, Malfitano
said.

He first noticed a problem when the plane began to lose
power. When it became clear he was out of fuel, he looked around for the
nearest landing field but quickly realized that he would not make it to
Whidbey Airpark, a small private landing strip a few miles to the east.

His
only choice was to try and land in the grasslands behind the waterfront
cabins on Sunlight Beach Road. Coincidentally, Malfitano had spent time
last week practicing grass landings in Arlington so his confidence was
high.

“To be honest, I wasn’t that scared,” he said.

However,
the area is soft and marshy and his fixed landing struts dug into the
mud quickly and caused the aircraft to flip over on to its bubble-canopy
roof.

The plane came to rest on Robert Swaffield’s property.
Although he didn’t witness the accident directly, his grandson, Steffan
Swaffield, was working at his house at the time and went out to help
Malfitano.

Steffan and several other bystanders braved thick blackberry bushes and made their way out to the crash site.

“The pilot was still inside but he seemed OK,” Steffan said.

Although
the crash cage surrounding the cockpit helped prevent Malfitano from
being crushed when the plane flipped over, he was trapped inside.
Working together, Steffan and the others lifted the tail of the aircraft
and Malfitano was able to crawl to safety.

Police and fire
department responders were on the scene within minutes of the crash and
also assisted. Langley Police Chief Randy Heston, who was a U.S. Navy
aircraft electrician before getting into law enforcement, said Malfitano
was fortunate to have landed where he did and that the outcome wasn’t
worse.

“He’s lucky it’s a nice soft spot out there,” Heston said.

The
plane did not appear to be leaking any fuel or otherwise be a danger to
the area. Heston said the National Transportation Safety Board had
declared dominion over the crash site and were expected to inspect the
wreckage Friday.

It’s unclear how the plane will be removed from
the marshy area but Swaffield wasn’t too concerned about his new lawn
ornament. While this was the first, and hopefully the last time, a plane
crashed on his property, he said he was just happy Malfitano was OK.